So, we’re canceling our daily subscription but keeping the Sunday paper (for now). As another Facebook friend who did the same thing put it, “I did the wimpy thing and went down to Sunday only.” Top reasons:

1. While it’s really great to feel like part of the local community by knowing what’s going on, etc., I probably spend 15 minutes per day “learning” things that really have no value to me (MP’s comment about social capital acknowledged but not, at the end of the day, enough to overcome my general feeling that I’m wasting time).
2. It really does irk me that some guy is driving around the neighborhood at 10 MPH delivering these things. And while maybe that guy will eventually lose a job if enough of us keep unsubscribing (as we seem to be), it’s not like I’m not encouraging new (and probably better-paying) jobs by doing more productive things with my time and money saved, including getting my news from other sources. (Not to mention the number of my plants this guy has beheaded over the years).
3. Plastic. Lots and lots of Boston Globe plastic.
4. Consumerism. Reading more ads — including the Globe’s own articles and product reviews — is not the way I want to spend my time, nor my money, nor the way I’d like to support local media.

On a more positive note, we continue to support WBUR as members, and I hope that as more of us defect from newspapers that public media will benefit. Why? Because I will donate money to WBUR; I won’t to the Globe. Sorry, that’s just the difference between a nonprofit and a for-profit. I’ll be getting my comics from the Houston Chronicle’s Roll-Your-Own (the only important one it lacks is Arlo & Janis).

btw I don’t do morning coffee. I listen to the news until something makes me so angry that I jolt myself out of bed.

That’s yet another reason to cancel our subscription to the Globe: the horrible environmental impact of the delivery guys driving around town. Add that to the amount of time I waste every morning reading the paper (which is the same stuff I’d be reading online, plus all the other crap I really needn’t be reading, like the op-eds), not to mention the actual cost of subscribing.

There’s only one and a half reasons to keep subscribing:

One: I can’t think of any other way to support many of the comic strips I love so much, especially the less popular ones like Arlo & Janis.

Half: I really hate contributing to the continuing decline of the daily newspaper, even if the Globe continues to waste too much of its resources on unnecessary coverage. (The nation and world will march on if the Globe drops its national and international desks).

Suggestions???

I was among the young Christians who traveled to Park Street Church last month to hear Jim Wallis’s call for social justice (”A New Generation Awakens,” March 12), and I can testify that a generational shift is indeed underway within American Christianity.

In fact, the Boston Faith + Justice Network, which also hosted an event with Mr. Wallis in Boston, is bringing together evangelical and mainline Christians to alleviate global poverty. Through Bible studies, we see our consumer habits in light of Scripture’s concern for the poor. As we awake to the global impact of our lifestyle, we are working for shifts in corporate and public policy to more justly steward and share our resources.

Still, many of my secular neighbors and friends consider “progressive evangelicals” mythical, even oxymoronic. Christian faith has been, and continues to be, a powerful force for social and economic justice.

Rachel Anderson
Director
Boston Faith + Justice Network

To analogize between a political campaign and a military one, tactics like endorsements and advertising are like long-range bombing: all they do is “soften up” the populace and provide the potential for votes. But warplanes and artillery do not capture territory: for that you need “boots on the ground,” which in the electoral context means real people making phone calls and canvassing door-to-door to convert general support into real votes.

Political analysts like Dan Payne are biased towards covering the “air war” because it’s sexy and easy to see. But a more accurate way to interpret poll data is to weight them by the presence of ground troops. Sudden shifts in popular numbers are unlikely to show up in real votes without a large and well-organized volunteer base to realize those gains. (The analysis is somewhat different when the numbers are static, in which case the leader will win, all else being equal). As I’d written earlier, Obama pulled the organizational structure out of Massachusetts, and Deval Patrick’s supporters just couldn’t cover the ground fast enough to capitalize on the sudden shift in public sentiment.

These homeowners are perpetuating bigotry, and so are voters who won’t cast their ballots for a woman or African-American because of “electability.”

Stop wondering whether America is “ready” for a non-white or non-male person to be President. Wonder if YOU are ready. Then cast your vote for the best candidate.

On the other hand, cognitive scientists also believe that humans have a natural bias to see patterns where none exist — which, in the case of pollsters, pundits, and journalists, leads to the need to find a story to “explain” statistics, whether polls or vote results. We’re also biased towards dramatic, human stories: it’s a lot more interesting to attribute Clinton’s victory to the “choked up” episode than a complex mix of more prosaic factors like operational effectiveness.

But then, with the exception of Mitt Romney, well-oiled machines are rarely photogenic.

Published in the Boston Globe on 12 Jan 2008.

I don’t care if you’re talking about Maureen Dowd or Jeff Jacoby: as shrill, biased, and repetitive as they are, the blogosphere does it better. In a time when newspapers are bleeding cash, why should they even bother to compete with the unwashed masses on their own turf? Newspapers should be crying “Hallelujah” that You, Too, Can Be An Op-Ed Writer so they can finally put resources back into investigative reporting and that old-fashioned journalism stuff.

Most of my colleagues at Berkman were ecstatic that the Times finally opened up “Times Select” to everyone, free of charge, but one upshot of setting all this information free was that Ms. Dowd has reappeared at the top of the “Most Emailed” charts. I was happier not knowing that the supposedly enlightened readers of the Times really were partisan flag-wavers after all. And not even all that intellectually enterprising: really, what is Frank Rich saying that the Daily Kos didn’t beat to death a few days earlier?

Another op-ed in today’s Globe took newspapers to task for trying to compete in the blogosphere: “Speeding up the metabolic rate of news consumption, and giving it the glib gloss of the blogosphere, will do nothing to solve [newspapers'] essential crisis. If anything, it will diminish the intellectual patience and empathy upon which honest brokers of news depend.” Steve Almond writes as if this were something new for newspapers. But today’s column by Jacoby demonstrates how kneejerk, regurgitated ideas have become standard fare on the op-ed pages.

Jacoby shows that ample turnaround time is not sufficient to ensure relevant reporting and deep analysis. The real problem is his prurient interest in the flash and noise of politics rather than the real substance. It’s maddening enough when Trudeau and Tinsley run gags that are both hackneyed and out-of-date. But as Jon Stewart would point out, the Globe, and its paid columnists, should do better than aim to match the aspirations of comedians.

I voted for it (like there was a choice), but Red and Rover is gone, and good riddance. Inauthentic fan letters notwithstanding, the strip is nothing more than a marketing ploy, fine-tuned to hit two notes (baby boomers and their children) in cynically calibrated harmony.

The strip is set in the 1950s, featuring tin can phones, afternoons watching “Leave it to Beaver,” and nary a Negro in sight. Yes, this is America idyll, back when boys were boys, girls were named Mary Lou, and people who owned cats were obviously queer. Do we really need to feed Baby Boomers more pre-adolescent fantasies that, yes, they grew up in a utopia and went on to become the Best Generation Ever?

But let’s put aside content for a moment here and talk about the comics business itself. Brian Basset is already author of yet another demographic smart bomb, “Adam,” a paean to caffeinated X’er parenting in the culturally-inert exurbs that runs daily in the Globe. So if for no other reason than fairness to other comic artists trying to catch a break, let’s not let this marginally competent comic artist take up two slots when he’s hardly demonstrated his worthiness as the author of one.